With predictions for a doubling of U.S. dementia patients by 2040, the need to better understand Alzheimer’s and its debilitating “relatives” has intensified. That’s why the five-year, $150 million federal grant awarded to the UW-Madison School of Medicine and Public Health is critical to learning more about root causes, possible disease pathways and better clinical care.
Steve Vavrus, director of the Wisconsin State Climatology Office, said Wisconsin tied 1987 to become the fourth-warmest year on record since 1895. The statewide average temperature for the year was 46.3 degrees Fahrenheit, which was roughly 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit warmer than the long-term average. Only 2012, 1998 and 1931 were hotter.
Data from UW Health urgent care centers indicates a 4.5 percent increase from 2022 in visits for acute respiratory infections during a 9-week period spanning June and July last year.
So far this decade, the state has experienced about a quarter of the population growth it saw between 2010 and 2020. But the COVID-19 pandemic led to a spike in deaths that altered the state’s trajectory, said David Egan-Robertson, demographer at the University of Wisconsin-Madison’s Applied Population Laboratory.
“It actually may be a case that population will grow a little bit faster because there will be fewer deaths going forward in the state,” Egan-Robertson said.
University of Wisconsin-Madison was awarded a fellowship to research and write a book on European socialist politics in the context of economic decolonization.
The project title is Failed Globalists: European Socialists, the Global South, and the Struggle for Economic Decolonization, 1945–2008. Giuliana Chamedes, associate professor of history at UW-Madison, was awarded $30,000 in funding for the fellowship.
Loss of vision over time is a particular interest for study author Freya Mowat, a veterinary ophthalmologist and professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Veterinary Medicine. Mowat studies how dogs’ vision declines over time and what factors contribute to it. She said that research may have applications for humans, as well.
“If we are finding risk factors for unhealthy dog aging, we may also find risk factors for unhealthy human aging — because we live with our dogs,” Mowat said.
College completion rates for low-income students and students of color remain dismal. About half of them earn a degree from the University of Wisconsin System within six years. Universities face tight budgets, Republican state lawmakers aim to eliminate diversity programs supporting first-generation students and students of color, and a U.S. Supreme Court ruling last year scrambled the college admissions landscape.
All-In Milwaukee partners with Alverno College, Carroll University, Marquette University, Milwaukee School of Engineering, the University of Wisconsin-Madison, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Whitewater and Wisconsin Lutheran College.
Claire Allen runs the office at UW-Madison every Tuesday from 10 to 4. She’s been staffing it for nine months as a housing counseling specialist.
“For a lot students, their first time renting is in college,” Allen said. “Lease questions, roommate conflicts, security deposit questions, options to end a lease if it’s not working out,” Allen said. “Questions about landlords not addressing repairs, that’s a big one.”
Update your calendar with winter fun. Mark Feb. 3 for the Frozen Assets Festival on Lake Mendota (cleanlakesalliance.org/frozen-assets/), Feb. 7-10 for the UW-Madison Winter Carnival at Memorial Union (union.wisc.edu/events-and-activities/special-events/wintercarnival/) and Feb. 9-11 for the Garden and Landscape Expo at the Alliant Energy Center (wigardenexpo.com).
“We believe in a diverse set of thoughts,” says Kaleb Autman, a Black student at the University of Wisconsin whose group is demanding a zero-tolerance policy on hate speech. “But when your thought is predicated on the subjugation of me or my people, or to a generalized people, then we have problems.”
UW-Madison political science professor and Elections Research Center director Barry Burden details the plan and timeline set by the Wisconsin Supreme Court for creating new legislative district maps.
Democrat Gov. Tony Evers told the Daily Cardinal, the student newspaper at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, he supports the bill to lower tuition for DACA recipients.
With efforts to bring passenger rail service to Madison once again gaining momentum, the city has identified eight potential sites for a rail station, located along three corridors Downtown, near the coming Madison Public Market and by the former Oscar Mayer plant.
Letter to the editor: As a proud UW-Madison alum and emerita professor, I’m deeply dismayed by the GOP’s efforts to strong-arm the Board of Regents into diminishing diversity, equity and inclusion programs.
Although the pandemic exacerbated many of Wisconsin’s workforce issues, labor force participation has been steadily decreasing across the state since its peak in the 1990’s. Today, at the Regional economic Conditions Conference hosted by the Federal reserve Bank of Minneapolis, UW Madison economist Matthew Kures said the age of workers has been a large factor in the decline.
“We simply have fewer workers of working age and prime working age than we had a decade ago or two decades ago,” said Kures.
“The rise of party activists is the theme of the last 20 years,” says Byron Shafer, a political scientist at the University of Wisconsin who wrote the definitive history of the 1968 reforms in Quiet Revolution: The Struggle for the Democratic Party and the Shaping of Post-Reform Politics. “And a lot of it does come from what happened back then.”
About 1 million people typically step up to work the polls in a presidential election, said Barry Burden, director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
The tributary streams used by Hovsgol grayling for spawning are also drying up. “They no longer have water in them during the spring spawning season,” says Olaf Jensen, an associate professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Nearly 80% of the 96 streams that once flowed into Lake Hovsgol are dry during the key months when the fish migrate.
A comprehensive analysis by FiveThirtyEight recommended going for two, especially late in the game, but a separate analysis by a University of Wisconsin-Madison professor, Laura Albert, concluded it’s best to kick the extra point. Even on similar questions, slightly different assumptions or data can lead to different answers.
After a post-doctoral fellowship at UNC, Dr. Adams joined the Sociology faculty of University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1965. For nearly 50 years he taught courses on Social Theory and large lecture classes on Marriage and the Family, reaching some 20,000 UW students.
Billy Blathras, 20, a student at University of Wisconsin–Madison, drove in last night with some of his fellow college Republicans to phone bank. “From my experience with the calls, most of them when we get an answer are for President Trump, which isn’t really too surprising considering his kind of commanding lead over the rest of the field,” he said
